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Here’s a Seattle and New Jersey-based trio who were all raised in the Garden State – siblings Brian (lead vocals/guitar) and Laura Cervino (keyboards) are from Wyckoff, and Jess Rees (guitar/keyboards/vocals) hails from Hawthorne. Huma’s website describes the group as a “music collective,” and lists ten other outfits the band members have played in; Brian’s Foreign Friends even released an EP in early 2013. But after their lone album We Are Here For You in 2006 and 2008’s Some Things Come and Go EP, Huma played their last show at Seattle’s Rendezvous Jewelbox Theatre in July 2009. (I’m kicking myself for not hearing of them when they were based in New Brunswick, NJ from 2003-08. Their show archive indicates they played a lot around my home state back then, including five gigs at much-missed Hoboken hangout Maxwell’s!)
According to their Facebook page, Stray’s five unreleased songs date from “the past few years,” suggesting some post-final show recording may have been afoot. Yet despite the EP’s title, these don’t sound like discarded scraps. As before, the band flit between different styles: the quietly majestic, Beach Boys/“Wouldn’t it Be Nice”-inspired “As the Radio Plays” is glitchy electronic pop, the Rees-sung “Sleepy Dreamer” is Lush/Alison’s Halo-like dreamy shoegaze, and the closing “Cover Me” is languid, breathy acoustic folk. But the EP gains more steam on the two tracks in which drummer Paul Benson guests. The buzzing “Jelly” is a driving, exuberant indie rocker with a catchy chorus, while the twinkly, windswept standout “Ride with a Ghost” benefits from dense thickets of atmospheric guitars and Cervino’s elevating, beguiling croon. Even if Huma is no longer a going concern, we’ll settle for fetching records like these every few years, or whenever the inspiration strikes.
